For many companies, particularly companies engaged in some form of e-commerce, maintaining a high-quality call center is a crucial component to achieving consistently high customer satisfaction. Nonetheless, call center customers persistently complain about background acoustic noise present on telephone calls received by call center agents. This background acoustic noise degrades the quality of the conversation between the customer and the call center agent which, in turn, leads to reduced customer satisfaction and associated effects. The greatest contributor to background acoustic or ambient noise in such call-center settings is mostly comprised of other agents' voices on the call center floor as they converse with other customers. The prevalence of the acoustic or ambient noise may be at least partially attributable to the layout of many call centers where floor space is minimized by packing agents into as physically small a footprint as possible. As optimizing customer service represents a central focus of call centers, a strong need exists for solutions that minimize the noise provided by these background conversations.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art.